There is a difference between a negotiated peace and unconditional surrender. Unconditional surrender was the only acceptable option. I guess they negotiated to leave the Emperor in power but we know that was necessary to win the peace...and we did. And every act and result of the Pacific War falls on the instigators, it was the war planners that bear all responsibility.
Spoiler: Graphic This is the cost of your unconditional surrender. Weak people think in absolutes and are incapable of seeing the other options. The world is not black and white like this footage. This idea that we needed an unconditional surrender is bunk. Especially if this is the cost.
Surrender can also come with acceptable terms to the loser as payment to the other side for not fighting them to the death and taking more of their soldiers in the process. There is no shame in granting reasonable concessions to a side willing to disarm and stop fighting. Especially if it means not murdering kids by instantly vaporizing them or worse giving them high doses of radiation and letting them watch their body parts fall off.
You aren't thinking with context, this was a militaristic society, that launched a sneak attack, that the very code of the people was to fight to the death. I believe that the thinking was the entire system had to be eliminated or we would just end up fighting a war with them again. The entire nation re-organized... you don't do that unless you occupy the capital and you don't occupy the opposing capital in a negotiated settlement.
Something tells me you would have called them japs. You have a simple view of them... very little respect. You act like they weren't rational at all. Clearly they were considering surrender already and we knew it. This samurai trope is all we get though eh. If that was true, then they never would have surrendered; even after the bombs. But it's simply not true. These are strategic individuals with fears and minds, and they definitely would have surrendered under the right conditions. But hey ignore all of that and the info I cited above.
Not me now, but I told you I do have some insight into the hatred American service men had for the Japanese from my Dad who was there in the 49th Fighter Group and was part of the occupation force. But yea, I killed a lot of Japs in the backyard circa 1963
Russia beat their add in Manchuria, they got their Navy's ass handed to them at Midway to a crippling extent. They knew a two-front war was not possible. Hell, they knew beating America was not possible. And yes, there is evidence apart from the simple facts at hand that they would have known they were incapable of winning a two front war with both pre-eminent powers with no Navy or access to resources. I am sure there is more evidence, but I already posted information about how Truman had wind that the Japanese were looking toward surrender. Whether or not it was unconditional is unknown, but it is a form of surrender they were clearly looking at; and logically, that is the move you make when you are rational human beings facing an impossible two-front war. You try to surrender with something instead of losing everything. These are not monsters; they are thinking and feeling human beings capable of seeing that. "Truman knew that the Japanese were searching for a way to end the war; he had referred to Togo’s intercepted July 12 cable as the 'telegram from the Jap emperor asking for peace.'" https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-08-05/hiroshima-anniversary-japan-atomic-bombs
I had family in that theater as well. Doesn't make a difference. That said, we didn't need to fight them on land. There were options and many people knew it. High up general and intel officials. Truman made a judgment call and it was wrong imo. Go ahead and agree with it if you think it was right. I guess being of a later generation, we have hind sight and the benefit of time to analyze it. Still, people at the time, were advising against it because it wasn't needed. This is all documented.
It is implicit if you have half a brain. If you really expect me to think that doesn't mean surrender, then you're just being stubbornly ignorant. A sovereign state may surrender following defeat in a war, usually by signing a peace treaty or capitulation agreement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surre...render,surrendering becoming prisoners of war.
You are underestimating the passion of the times. You 'generation later' hindsight is tempered in a way that did not exist in 1945. Hundreds of thousands of Americans were dying, the bombs will stop that from happening... case closed for an American President. The U.S. Army Air Forces lost 15,694 dead and missing out of a total of 24,230 casualties in the Pacific, a figure of 65%. Total U.S. combat casualties in the war against Japan were thus 111,606 dead or missing and another 253,142 wounded. That makes a huge impact on people.
It's been noted, but the savagery of the Pacific front certainly darkened the mood for both sides. Even when the US was "winning" it was a ridiculously costly battle with no thought of returning to normalcy. I think it's perverse and ironic that the Japanese justified all their horrific war crimes in order to shock and destroy the will of their opposition. Well, two nukes did just that for the Japanese but allowed them to rebuild without a Iraq-like insurgency. Also if the war did drag on and opened the door for a Russian invasion, I'm sure no one would be complaining how the Russian half was turned into a parking lot. I'm not trying to justify using a long lasting wmd on a civilian people, but I don't think the Japanese were complete victims either. Having these discussions while America used that war to justify maintaining the largest and most potentially destructive military juggernaut in the history of mankind is a bit tone deaf if you take a step back and think about it.
Except Ike was against it... Leahy... MacAuthur... men of their times. You are simply wrong. People of that time were capable of thinking of alternatives to this and seeing it for the atrocity it was. They also didn't have years of shitty history classes telling them a lie that it was needed. A clear advantage in my book.
no need to get nasty with me. No, don't think that means surrender; and no, I am not just being stubbornly ignorant. The Japanese were trying to prolong the war and make the probable casualty count SO high on the U.S. side that they hoped the U.S. would sue for peace and/or agree to an armistice before electing to invade the Japanese home islands. That is a BIG difference from "surrender."
